


Frumious

by starkadder



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, Blood Drinking, F/F, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkadder/pseuds/starkadder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Beware the Jabberwock, my son!</em><br/><em>The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!</em><br/><em>Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun</em><br/><em>The frumious Bandersnatch!</em><br/><br/>Lola Perry can remember being too young to realise that nonsense words weren't meant to have particular meanings. She remembers getting very cross at the way her father would laugh when she stamped her foot and insisted that they weren't real words and a poem with words that didn't make sense was a silly poem. But now, lying in Mattie's arms, Lola thinks she is beginning to understand at last what 'frumious' means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frumious

**Author's Note:**

> Non-canon for Season 2. The Dean's not in there.
> 
> All quotations are drawn from the works of Lewis Carroll, mainly _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass_ , and _The Hunting of the Snark_. These are all public domain and available on all sorts of places around the Internet for those growing curiouser and curiouser.

  
_Beware the Jabberwock, my son!_  
_The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!_  
_Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun_  
_The frumious Bandersnatch!_  
'Jabberwocky'

Lola Perry can remember being too young to realise that nonsense words weren't meant to have particular meanings. She remembers getting very cross at the way her father would laugh when she stamped her foot and insisted that _frumious_ wasn't a real word and they were silly poems because everyone knew words were meant to make sense, so a poem with words that didn't make sense wasn't a real poem.

It was, she recognised years later, the sort of mocking but gentle laugh that an adult makes when they are remembering themselves being in your shoes. She was very proud of herself for understanding this because it meant she was beginning to think like an adult herself.

When she was older still, and wearing floral dresses and trying to do spells that worked and hoping that Susan would stick around and not go all weird, she decided that proper poetry should reveal the secrets of the universe to people, and open the doors of perception, and let in the radiant spiritual light on the other side of the veil. _Jabberwocky_ and _The Hunting of the Snark_ and the _Alice_ books were all very well to make you laugh a bit, but they weren't real. Real poetry was solemn and soft, and helped you cope with all the loud rude people you met everyday. It was better if it didn't rhyme, because that was limiting.

After the... Incident in her first year, she stopped encouraging whatever was on the other side of the veil to come through, because she had seen it and it was awful. She decided that if the world was strange and incomprehensible then that was the world's business. _Her_ business was to keep the part of it around her as neat and tidy as possible, because that was clearly the only way any part of it was going to make any sense at all. She began to acquire a new respect for Alice Liddel, who managed to remain sensible and level-headed despite all the weird happening around her. Alice never met Tythia, of course, but Lola had a feeling that she would have coped.

And now that the weird is coming back, and now that Su- _LaFontaine_ seems to be actively encouraging it, Lola is determined that there should be an Alice around to keep a normal perspective on things. This doesn't always work – what with the cool vampire girlfriends and disembodied sidekicks and hungry light demons and whatnot – but at the very least she can refrain from encouraging it. Or try to refrain. 

The appearance of Matska Belmonde is a disturbance. The appearance of Carmilla Karnstein was also a disturbance, of course, but a vaguely-repentant vampire is at least one gesture towards normal, and Lola did manage to stake that other vampire, Will: maybe if you stake one it cancels out fighting alongside the other. But Ms. Belmonde is like a piece from a different game entirely, and there is no way to cancel her out and now everybody is trying to find a loophole in the rules, except the rules didn't include her in the first place.

When she meets Lola for the first time, she grabs her hand. “You, hot chocolate girl. You look familiar. Have I seen you somewhere before?”. Lola snatches her hand away.

“I think I'd remember that,” she says and turns on her heel, with the voices of Alice and the White Queen in her head. _I can't remember things before they happen_ , she thinks. _It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards_ , the White Queen retorts. But the voice of the White Queen in her head is now that of Matska Belmonde and Lola is afraid of why she might remember the glamorous vampire in the black dress.

***

“Well, hello to the hot chocolate girl,” says Matska at the next broadcast. “You know, I don't think we were properly introduced last time. But then you probably know me already – through Carmilla? You can call me Mattie.” She extends a hand. Lola hesitates, but takes it.

“Perry” she says shortly.

“Now is that a first name or a last name? Either way it's a pleasure to meet somebody who knows their chocolate. Are you German by any chance?” Matska's manner is pitch-perfect obliging society hostess.

“It's my last name. My first name's Lola. Yes, I'm German. Glad you like the chocolate.” Lola's answers are stacatto, like she's back at school and the teacher is asking her why she and Martha were quarelling during the lunch break.

“And you're the one who – correct me if I'm wrong here – staked my little brother Will?” There is no change in Matska's manner. She asks it as if she's enquiring as to whether this is the same Lola Perry that so-and-so from the florists' mentioned.

“Yes” says Lola after a short pause. She can hear her heart beating very fast and hard and the worst part is that she knows the vampire can hear it too. “I staked him,” she adds after the tension gets too much. “Down below the Lustig.”

“Now isn't that something,” purrs Matska, moving closer. Lola can feel her own breath coming faster and her muscles starting to tense. But Matska does not strike, only holds the closeness for a moment, and then turns away.

“Well, no specific blame to you, I'm sure,” she declares airily. “Casualties of war and so forth. I'm sure you were put up to it by that meddling friend of yours – not that I can pull her apart either, or Kitty will be making doe eyes at me for the next half a millenium.” She pouts a little at that last disappointment.

“No” says Lola, not sure why she's doing this.

“What?”

“No. I wasn't put up to it. I... wanted to stake him. It made things better.” Lola looks very carefully at the ground in front of her but she can feel the other woman staring at her.

“Ciao, Lola,” says Matska, and the rustle of her dress announces her departure.

  
_"The time has come", the Walrus said,_  
_"To talk of many things:_  
_Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax —_  
_Of cabbages — and Kings —_  
_And why the Sea is boiling hot —_  
_And whether pigs have wings."_  
'The Walrus and the Carpenter'

Lola is listening to the broadcast and wondering at what point the world has become precisely this mad, and whether it has always been like this. Laura is giving accounts of harpies on the south lawn, rains of spiders, exploding mushrooms. There is an update on the giant anglerfish god buried beneath the campus, and for some reason nobody is running away because of it.

Matska’s contributions are even worse. Except they’re not exactly, they sound just like every other normal news broadcast in the world and that is what is so wrong about them. Lola shifts uncomfortably in her seat every time Matska informs viewers that there is a ‘ten percent chance of precipitation’ instead of a ‘rain of piranhas’ or that there are ‘transit inconveniences’. She wonders whether the woman would describe Carmilla as ‘a light-averse octogenarian with extreme haemoglobin deficiency and really good skin’. That is not a pleasant thought.

“Alchemy club are really going for it, huh?” says LaFontaine beside her, and Lola sighs because she can tell her friend is enjoying this on some twisted level.

“Well, we haven’t been invaded in at least three days, so that’s a good sign for the truce,” Lola offers. It has certainly made the garden easier to put in order. Singing flowers were… alarming.

“Mind you, some of the stuff they left behind when they retreated from Danny’s army were… hoo, could do with more of that,” LaFontaine admits. They have been looting the campus for the last week now, filling up their duffel bag with all manner of who knows what and hoarding it in the tower room they have turned into a laboratory. Lola is not allowed in, which stings a bit. Not that she particularly wants to find out, but LaFontaine has never been this secretive about their experiments before. She is afraid that the reason for this is that LaFontaine knows she would disapprove even more than normal.

“You all right, Perr?” LaFontaine asks, seeing her expression. Lola sighs. She can’t say quite what she thinks, which is that she’s not the one LaFontaine should be asking. Lola is standing still, carefully keeping in the centre of her world as everyone else flies around and around. Why would she be the one who’s not all right? She’s not the one in bed with a vampire, or locked in a tower room trying to do who-knows-what, or fighting a civil war over a university campus. 

“It’s nothing,” she says quietly.

“And remember to wrap up warm today, because the wind is very blustery!” interrupts Matska cheerfully after Laura starts to inform the campus about the howling smoke vortex recently seen attacking students on the Zeta-Summer border.

That seems to be that for the broadcast, as Laura throws back the curtain and stomps off to Carmilla to sulk a little. Matska stands up and beams at the assembled company.

“Now, wasn’t that a productive session?” she asks. Nobody replies.

“Hot chocolate, anyone?” Lola asks to fill the silence. There is a vague chorus of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. LaFontaine excuses themself to return to their experiments. Danny and Kirsch drift away with a last glance at Laura and Danny respectively. Lola bustles into the kitchen to set out the mugs.

“Enjoy the broadcast, Lola?” asks Matska’s voice from behind her. Lola stiffens.

“It was… most informative,” she manages to say, turning round to watch Matska flow into the kitchen.

“Oh, I am glad you thought so,” says Matska solicitously. “It’s so important to get one’s message out, don’t you think? For the good of the poor livestock out there.”

“If that’s what you think of the students.” Lola’s voice is sharper than she intended and Matska laughs softly to hear it. She continues spooning the cocoa powder into the pan of milk and starts adding sugar. Somewhere over her shoulder the vampire is watching her, she knows, but she will not turn and give Matska the satisfaction.

“Shocked, hot chocolate girl?”

“It’s what you do. You’re a killer. I don’t expect you to have human feelings.” Lola’s mouth is doing the talking but somewhere inside her head a little voice is screaming at her to be careful when walking on thin ice.

“You’re a killer too, Lola.” She says this softly. Lola says nothing as she stirs the pan of hot chocolate. Focus on the spoon. Stir the mixture round, make sure the cocoa powder doesn’t clump together. Make sure the sugar doesn’t gather at the bottom or it’ll burn. Keep stirring till it dissolves. _I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?_ Tweedledum interrupts in a tone of great contempt.

“Cookie?” she asks brightly. 

“What?”

“Do you want a cookie, Ms. Belmonde?” Lola grabs the tin by the oven and thrusts it towards Matska, who takes one, eyes never leaving Lola’s face.

Making cookies is a thing Lola does, and because it is a thing Lola does, she does it on a regular basis. Not like killing vampires, because Lola only did that once and - despite Matska Belmonde - she does not intend to make a habit of it. So therefore killing is not the kind of thing that Lola does. Hold on to that, she thinks.

After Matska is gone and the drinks have been handed around, Lola returns to the kitchen and starts cleaning the hard-to-reach places so that nobody can see her face. _Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes when you walk—and remember who you are!_ advises the Red Queen and although she doesn’t speak French she does turn her toes out when walking, so maybe if she tries very hard she can achieve two out of three.

_How cheerfully he seems to grin_  
_How neatly spreads his claws_  
_And welcomes little fishes in_  
_With gently smiling jaws!_  
'How doth the little crocodile'

Now that she's involved in the regular broadcasts, Matska is in the house all the time. Lola reminds herself in an effort to be charitable that this is after all her mother's house and Matska probably has more right to it than she herself does, but it still feels like an invasion. Matska is curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine, looking like she could be commanding armies. Matska is strolling in the garden, somehow managing to not cover her painfully elegant dress in grass cuttings. Matska is making coffee at six in the morning – Lola's own private hour alone before anyone else gets up – perfectly coiffed and without a hint of grogginess.

“Good morning, Lola,” she purrs. Lola knows she must have seen the brief fall in her expression, because Matska smirks that little bit more.

“Good morning, Ms. Belmonde,” she says with as much dignity as can be managed given that she is still in her pajamas with her hair tied up in a fussy but practical-for-sleeping bun while Matska looks like an advert for silk dressing gowns.

“Now now, you know I don't stand on ceremony. 'Mattie' will be just fine. Do you take coffee in the morning?” Lola nods warily, and she takes out a second cup. 

“Why are you over here so early... Mattie?” Lola asks, and sees a small inclination of Matska's head as she uses the familial name. 

“Oh, it's just too quiet in the faculty club. And while their guest rooms are nice, the rest of the facilities are a bit of a dump. So I'm thinking I might take a room here. Don't worry - there are plenty to choose from. I won't kick you out of yours.” She pours coffee into the cups and hands one to Lola.

“And do you get up so early every morning, Lola?” she asks.

“Since we're on a preferred-name basis now, you know everyone calls me Perry,” shoots back Lola. Matska smiles wide. Does she practice that smile in front of a mirror? 

“Oh, indeed I do. But Lola is such a lovely name. I know everyone else may call you Perry, but I do hope you call yourself Lola.” She sips her coffee.

 _What's the use of having names_ , says the voice of the Gnat in Lola's head, _if they won't answer to them?_

“No use to them,” mutters Lola in reply, “but it's useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do people have names at all?” She knows Alice's responses by heart by now.

“There's the attitude to have,” murmurs Matska approvingly. Lola jumps, only half aware that she had spoken out loud.

“To pick a name for other people?” she asks, to cover her embarassment at speaking her thoughts out loud,

“Of course. You don't think I was born _Matska Belmonde_ ,” her voice mocks the grandeur of the name, “do you? Even if you can't guess the origin of my first name, _Belmonde_ is a bit Romance for eleventh-century Zanzibar, darling.” She shrugs. “But I grew into it.”

Lola watches Matska drink her coffee and wonders where the woman's centre is. She learnt that vocabulary back in her floral-dresses-and-incense phase: centring oneself, finding the heart of one's life. Even after she moved on from that, she had kept the idea that some people's character traits are arranged neatly around their centres, while others' are jumbled up and made of whatever flotsam they pick up. She suspects that she is not centred, although sometimes that actually seems preferable. Matska is definitely centred. Everything about her speaks of a single, consistent personality applying itself rigorously for centuries, refining her manner of speech, her morning habits, her laquered beauty. Lola wonders whether, if she spent long enough gazing at Mattie's long fingers stroking her coffee cup, she would grasp some part of the woman who existed prior to the vampire.

“Looking for something, Lola?” Her gaze snaps up to see Matska regarding her with something like amusement. Suddenly Lola is annoyed. Who is this woman to be sitting here in her kitchen, telling her what name to use-

“Eggs,” she says firmly, standing up.

“What?”

“Do you want any eggs? I'm going to have eggs for breakfast. Do you want some?” Lola is speaking fast. 

“Soft-boiled would be nice, chef,” smiles Matska with a flash of those white teeth and Lola feels so angry with her suddenly.

“Right. Fine. Soldiers as well?” Lola asks with gritted teeth. She can feel all the frustration of this – this _impossible_ situation building up.

“That would be lovely, Lola.” Matska says warmly, and Lola stumps off to look for eggs. 

“What are you doing here?” Lola snaps suddenly, before they have started eating. Matska opens her mouth to answer, but Lola interrupts. “I mean, really. Why? Why are you turning up here at six in the morning like they don't have coffee at the faculty club and sitting in my kitchen and talking to me like you're not some bloodsucking monster and-” her voice peters out as she runs out of breath and courage.

“The question is what you're doing here, hot chocolate girl,” Matska says. “You know I'm not normally in the habit of letting people speak to me you do. People who do get torn apart and left for the crows to finish off.”

Lola is silent for a moment, staring at Matska in fury.

“You have _no_ right,” she says. “You expect everyone to just... accomodate you. And follow you around and you force me to look at you and... you don't even seem to care that I killed Will and you should, but you want to kill me so _why aren't you killing me?_ ” she bursts out. 

_It's too late to correct it_ , says the Red Queen: _when you've once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences._

But Matska is looking at her with... pity? Maybe?

“You know, most people stay out of my way if they're afraid of me. And most people are afraid of me, as it happens.” She smirks, obviously proud of herself, and leans forward over the table, leans too close. “And so are you – but you go out of your way to remind me what you did to my brother. You taunt me as to why I'm not sucking your blood right now. It might be amusing to see what you do next.” 

For a moment she stays there and Lola is aware that she is close enough that her breath tickles Lola's cheek. Then she straightens up, slides her chair back and strides out.

_….it next will be right_  
_To describe each particular batch:_  
_Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,_  
_From those that have whiskers, and scratch._  
'The Hunting of the Snark: Fit the Second'

“Nooo, Carm! No fair!” Laura whines, and Lola laughs at her desperate attempts to jump just a little higher.

“Perfectly fair, cupcake.” Carmilla teases back. “To the victor the spoils, and they're staying up here with me on my pedestal.”

“But I want them now,” Laura wheedled, “Perry, help me rescue my cookies from this thieving vampire scum!” She dances around Carmilla's elevated position on the bookshelf with balled fists.

“I have plenty of tasty vitamin-filled treats in the kitchen, Laura,” Lola reminds her. She has never stopped reminding Laura that there are foods in the world not made of palm oil. “And besides, dinner's in an hour. You'll spoil your appetite,”

“Humph!” Laura sulks and sits on the ground with the expression of a grumpy five year-old. Carmilla sighs dramatically, and a single cookie falls neatly onto Laura's head from near the ceiling.

“Playing with your food, Kitty-cat?” Matska drifts in through the doorway. “Careful not to leave a mess on the carpet, or Lola here will burst an artery. And that's a thought just too delicious to have before dinner.” 

Lola takes a deep breath. The she lets it out, and thinks about the White Queen's words to Alice. _Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!_

“Mattie, play nice,” says Carmilla from atop the bookshelves, her legs swinging just inches above the highest point Laura can reach when jumping.

“I am nice, sis. Wouldn't you say I'm nice, Lola?” Matska turns on her with that wide gleaming smile. Somehow it seems to fill Lola's head with ideas, only she doesn't exactly know what they are.

“I could call you nice,” Lola replies, “but when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” She says this rather primly, and feels a touch of satisfaction at Matska's expression.

The elder vampire wanders over to the sofa and folds herself onto it. Carm joins her, dropping almost silently from the bookshelf and leaving the box of cookies with Laura on the way over. The two curl up around each other.

“How was the board meeting?” Carmilla asks.

“Oh, heavens,” sighs Matska. “How they make those people so dull I shall never understand.”

“Rather you than me,” Carmilla informs her with satisfaction and Laura settles herself on an arm of the sofa to wrap an arm around her girlfriend's shoulder.

“Yes, Kitty,” says Matska sarcastically. “Because at least I turn up. You, I'm willing to bet, would find some hidden love-nest in an obscure corner of Siberia to hide in if there was the faintest hint that you might be required to do some work.”

“No lectures, Mattie,” says Carmilla wearily. Lola can see her fingers curling around Laura's chin and starting to stroke the contours of her neck. It is oddly distracting.

“I just think if you made some effort to live into your inheritance-”

“Not now, Mattie.” Carmilla gets up. “Come on, cupcake. Time to get dressed for dinner.”

“Since when do we get dressed for dinner?” asks Lola.

“Since I was planning to get _un_ dressed first,” Carmilla drawls suggestively, and pulls a red-faced Laura out of the room with her. Matska scowls after them.

“Hormone bombs, those two,” says Lola to cover her embarassment. 

Matska sighs and closes her eyes. “Lola, if you want to avoid the prospect of me tearing apart my sister and everyone within range, and thus causing large amounts of mess, you will put a glass of something exceptionally alcoholic into my hand within thirty seconds.”

Twenty-six seconds later Matska opens her eyes as several measures of brandy make their appearance in a glass that Lola pushes into her hand.

“Not having one yourself, darling? It's frightfully bad form to give a girl a drink without taking one yourself. You might be trying to get me drunk.”

Lola pauses, decides there is no good way this can end, so she might as well take the route that includes alcohol and pours her own glass – rather more than she intended, she doesn't like brandy that much and now she has to drink it all – and even manages to sit on the seat next to Matska that she brushes off and motions her into. They sit in silence for a while, Lola knotted up in tension.

“Relax Lola, I’m not going to eat you.” Easy for her to say relax, thinks Lola. She’s in her element – if indeed she’s ever out of it. All lolling around without a hair out of place despite the ostensibly exhausting day. Lola has flour smudges on her jeans and a red mark on her chin where she scraped herself with a cupboard door, but Matska seems to have been offstage in the costume department until minutes before. Not fair.

“Really convincing coming from the sociopath who makes jokes about me bleeding out onto the floor.” 

“Coming from the sociopath who hasn’t spilled a drop of blood in this house since she arrived,” she reminds Lola. “Look, if I were going to kill you I’d have done so already.”

“So what’s the point of you being here if there’s nobody to kill?” she demands. It occurs to her that despite her protests she must actually believe Matska, because somewhere along the line she has stopped expecting to be eviscerated for answering back.

“Oh, somebody’s got to keep an eye on Mircalla. She’s still very young and has hardly lived independently of Mother before,” she grimaces, “and there’ll be some hard times ahead when the honeymoon period with the cub reporter wears off. And this mess of a pseudo-versity Mother left behind needs dealing with or the world will be overrun by brainwashed fish minions.” She holds out her glass and Lola refills it. “More to the point, Prim-and-Proper, what are you doing here?”

“We did try to leave,” Lola says, “but the Alps proved… difficult. With the witches and mobs and kobolds. You know.” She sighs. “And Laura will need looking after. As you say - honeymoon period. And I can’t leave Su- LaFontaine.” Matska raises an eyebrow. “And besides - if I’m still here at the end of the year having gone to the one class that is actually still running, I can finally get my degree.”

Matska rolls her eyes. “And then what? You’ll leave this whole supernatural world you’ve entered and start a teashop somewhere?”

“Well, I did banish the Queen of the Fairies to keep things normal. So. I’m kind of committed.” She catches sight of Matska’s sudden, horrified expression. “Oh, ask Carmilla. I don’t talk about it. Until I’ve had a very large glass of brandy, apparently.” She makes a face.

“You- wait, the actual Queen of the Fairies who Mother trapped centuries ago? Or just some pumped-up elf with delusions of grandeur?”

“Tythia. That one. But I don’t talk about it, so stop!”

Matska breaks out into a glowing smile. “Lola, I had no idea! Oh, you should have said - I’m really very impressed.”

It is absolutely absurd, thinks Lola, that I am fighting down the urge to bask in the praise of an ancient bloodthirsty monster. She’s reacting like my mother always does when people announce pregnancies.

After dinner - when the washing up is done, and Carmilla and Laura have run off to make their own entertainment, and LaFontaine has gone back to whatever it is they're doing with the electricity and the heavy duffle bag in the tower room – Lola decides the brandy before dinner was a bad idea when combined with the wine at dinner, because now Mattie is suggesting that a glass of Sancerre might go well with the remains of the cheesecake and a slump in front of the fire and she actually thinks that's an attractive idea.

“-but I downright refused to go north of the Pyrenees for the rest of the century. Seriously darling, you have no idea how relieved I was when the nineteenth century got the hang of plumbing-.”

Somewhere in between the wine and the fire and the frankly rather alarming discussions of the hygenic failings of fourteenth century France, Lola notices with a faint sense of alarm that she's not feeling an enormous sense of alarm at spending an evening with a very old, very bloodthirsty, very beautiful vampire. She notices with another, fainter, sense of alarm that she's adding the adjective 'beautiful' into a list that had previously focused on the 'old' and 'bloodthirsty' parts. She notices with a final, very faint, sense of alarm that it's rather late, and she's had rather too much to drink and that the cushions are rather comfortable and that she is rather sleepy.

Mattie is talking on, about something or other she did with somebody called Mansa Musa, and Lola wonders whether her smile ever gets so bright that the rest of her fades away behind it like the Cheshire Cat.

_"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!_  
_But we've got our brave Captain to thank"_  
_(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best-_  
_A perfect and absolute blank!"_  
The Hunting of the Snark: Fit the First

How curious, Lola thinks, and stifles a giggle. My name is Lola Perry, I was born twenty-one years ago in Frankfurt and last night I was tucked into bed by a thousand year-old vampire who left me a note, a glass of water and some painkillers. I had dreams about her (such dreams). It is all too silly and no doubt in a short while I shall burst out laughing and wake myself up from this dream.

_Lola,_

_If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later._

_Mattie_

The painkillers help, and Lola is soon dressed and downstairs. There is no Mattie in the kitchen, but then breakfast time is long past. The light is curious today. There is a great blanket of cloud forming a ceiling, and yet grey-green light seem to be wafting down from every part of the sky. It is almost like being deep underwater, or on the other side of a sheet of dirty glass. Perhaps it is the hangover, but the greyish light makes coloured objects stand out that much bolder.

The glasses and crumb-covered plates from last night are still out in the kitchen. Did the others notice them this morning, ask each other why Perry went to bed without finishing all of the washing up? Lola deals with them now. She usually takes satisfaction in looking around a clean and tidy kitchen, but today everything seems like a joke she has not yet understood. The cups in rows are hiding their grins. She receives ironic glances from the cutlery.

A sense of calm unreality settles over her as she steps out into the garden. The campus is still and in the garden the first buds of early crocuses are peeking up through the grass. From somewhere, apparently far off, she can hear voices laughing, but they are not close enough to distinguish words. She spreads her arms wide as if she is balancing on a high beam thrust out over a ravine, and places her feet carefully one in front of the other on the bark-chipping path.

I am walking the plank, she thinks.

“Lola, you survived!” Mattie’s voice is warm and teasing, and Lola turns precisely on the spot to meet her. She is dressed in red and green, and Lola steps delicately forward to join her.

“You put me to bed,” Lola says simply, and Mattie breaks out into a grin.

“Seemed the least I could so after depriving you of the first pillow you chose,” she raises an eyebrow conspiratorially. “But I needed my shoulder back, so bed was what you got. How’s your head?”

Lola smiles and makes a non-committal gesture somewhere between a node and a shake. “How’s yours?”

“Oh I’m fine, darling. I’ve had plenty more practice than you. Although sis doesn’t drink as much these days since the ‘cupcake’ arrived and needed to be looked after, so I suppose I’m grateful for the chance to stay practiced.” She starts off down the path again and Lola falls into step beside her.

Lola asks about her morning, and Mattie launches into a story of some irritating old Baron who occupies an honorary position on the Board and wastes everyone’s time with rambling speeches. Lola nods and interjects with short questions here and there, but it all comes from a long way off. Mostly, she is conscious that this is easy, that somewhere between yesterday and today she crossed an invisible barrier and the new normal is conversing quietly with Matska Belmonde, who offers her a hand to help her over the tumble-down section of wall that serves as a sort of stile out of the more formal garden and into a little patch of grass studded with bare fruit trees.

“I’m mad,” she says with sudden determinacy.

“How do you know you’re mad?” asks Mattie.

“I must be. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come here.”

Mattie laughs. “Oh, gidget. You can’t still be on that whole everything be normal routine. You know how you survive living centuries? You stop judging. There’s almost nothing in this world that’s absolute. And when you’ve stopped judging you find that whatever you were annoyed about is still there and there was never anything strange about it in the first place. It was only your insistence that it should be so.”

“And you know about normality how, Ms. Vampire?” Lola asks. She doesn’t turn to look at Mattie. If she meets those eyes she will be forced to take this conversation seriously, and then she won’t be able to keep going.

“Novelty never stops, Lola. You think you’re set in your ways after twenty-one vampire-free years and you can’t get over it? I had nine centuries of knowing flight was impossible - and then I bought a private jet.”

“A private jet. Of course you did.”

“They don’t serve my kind of drinks on Air Morocco, you know.”

“O,” says Lola softly. “Negative!” she adds brightly, and Mattie chuckles.

She jumps over a puddle in the middle of the path and watches with fascination as Mattie does a sort of high-speed shimmy that gets her across without a stain on her smart shoes. Far too pretty and neat for walking on wet paths, Lola thinks. Or is that just Mattie herself?

“I still think you’re a monster, you know,” she confesses. “You eat people.”

“Yes,” agrees Mattie. “And you can rage about that as much as you like and I will still be here, and still be as I am.” Lola considers this.

“I don’t see how we can be friends.”

“Well, neither do I! And yet here we are,” Mattie finishes, and when she breaks out into that smile Lola manages to meet her eyes for the first time that day.

_As to temper the Jubjub's a desperate bird,_  
_Since it lives in perpetual passion:_  
_Its taste in costume is entirely absurd—_  
_It is ages ahead of the fashion_  
'The Hunting of the Snark: Fit the Fifth'

Lola is watching Mattie eat smoked ham. They have dispensed with the normal decorum for this picnic and so Mattie is tearing the slices into ribbons with her fingernails and spooling them into her mouth. It is oddly entrancing. Between mouthfuls Mattie's eyes flick sideways for a brief moment, so Lola knows that Mattie knows that she is watching her.

“Indoor picnics,” Mattie declares, “are a novelty worth remembering.”

“LaFontaine and I invented them when we were little,” says Lola. “We would take our plates and go sit on the floor in the corner and pretend we were camping somewhere. But we'd still let our parents wash up.”

It is raining outside, and has been raining for some days. It is incessant, and the house has begun to feel claustrophobic. The indoor picnic was Lola's idea to get away from the sniping between Mattie and her sister. They have put down blankets in the solarium, and brought a basket and pillows. There is a flask of tea, sandwiches, cold meat, and plenty of cake. Carmilla's face when she saw her older sister strolling up the stairs with a picnic basket is one memory that Lola will cherish for a long time.

“But then,” says Lola, “you eat without cutlery all the time, don't you?”

“Blood is different. It's a question of etiquette. Blood is supposed to be drunk fresh from the veins of a fainting victim. But to other foods there are other appropriate styles.”

Lola feels a moment of pride at not reacting to Mattie's implicit taunt. What a horrid thing to say, primly comments one voice inside her. What an fascinating thing to say, whispers another.

“Is the fainting quite necessary?” she asks, trying to give the impression that she regularly enquires about blood drinking habits and that this is a minor aspect she's curious about. “Doesn't it make it difficult to keep hold of the poor thing?”

Mattie laughs. “Vampire strength, Lola. Even Kitty down there could keep hold of a beefcake twice her size. How she managed to get kidnapped by your little gang of four I don't know – mind not on the job, I suppose.” She lies back and closes her eyes, stretching herself out on the cushions they have brought up to the solarium.

“You're worried about Carmilla.”

“Darling, I have been worried about Carmilla since 1698. Turning teenagers into vampires is a messy business. Yes, they grow up in time, but the bodies they're eternally in have their own effects. I sometimes think it was Mother's way of keeping them down – glad she hadn't thought of it in 1015 or maybe I'd be mincing around in ripped jeans.”

She'd look fantastic, thinks Lola. Of course she would.

“Do you actually like Laura?” she asks her. She has noted that Mattie seems to treat Laura with that regular alternation of threats and terms of endearment that she otherwise reserves for Lola herself.

Mattie waves an arm in a grand gesture. “The cupcake,” she declares airily, “is as sweet an example of innocent humanity as one could wish. I'm sure she makes a fine pet. I am equally sure,” she continues in a more serious tone, “that she thinks Mircalla will somehow stop being a blood-drinking monster if she's around long enough. It is a failing of humans to expect that.”

Lola is silent for a while, thinking of their walk a few days before. “And Carmilla?”

“Wants to run away from it all. You'd think that someone who spent sixty years in a box would be keener to engage with the world productively, but she just wants to hide away.”

Lola lies back beside her. The glass ceiling of the solarium is sheeted over with rainwater running down to the gutters and the whole room is full of the sound of pattering raindrops. If I'm Alice at this little tea party, she thinks, which one is Mattie: the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, or the Dormouse? The amount Carmilla sleeps, she could well be the Dormouse. So maybe Mattie is the Hatter – after all, time does stand still for her, or at least it has for the past thousand years.

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?” she murmurs. Mattie rolls over onto her side to face her.

“They both have inky quills,” is her weary reply. She's heard it before, of course.

Lola contradicts her sternly. “Because Poe wrote on both.” 

“I think you might do something better with the time,” Mattie says, ”than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.” She shifts closer and Lola is suddenly aware of the whole of her, of the whole length of Mattie's body laid out inches away. 

Mattie is very present, thinks Lola. Very centred. Very much herself. She remembers LaFontaine trying to explain to her once how the force of gravity could be modelled as like a big weight distorting a rubber sheet. The sheer there-ness of the large weight distorts the sheet and all the smaller weights roll into it. _And welcomes little fishes in, with gently smiling jaws._

Her heart is beating very fast and she knows Mattie can hear it. _After a fall such as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs!_ she thinks, and does not know why she thinks it. She lets out a sigh, and finds herself pushing her lips against Mattie's.

Mattie moves into the kiss like she was expecting it. Her lips are warm and soft, and Lola breathes in her rich, woody scent.

_"But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day_  
_If your Snark be a Boojum! For then_  
_You will softly and suddenly vanish away,_  
_And never be met with again!"_  
'The Hunting of the Snark: Fit the Third'

“I can't believe it,” says Lola to her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

“Can't you?” retorts the Perry in the glass. “Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes. You know, like you do when you're sleeping and you have those wonderful dreams about Mattie and how she-”

“There's no use trying!” insists Lola. “One can't believe impossible things”

“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” she replies. “Although you're getting quite a lot at the moment, so you'll get better. Six impossible things before breakfast, that's the goal.” Lola huffs.

“Oh, you're hopeless!” Lola and her reflection say to each other and march out of the bathroom. It is nearly six o'clock, and breakfast time is approaching. She may not have experienced six impossible things yet, but then she takes an early breakfast so perhaps there is a lower standard. So far she has woken from feverish dreams of Matska Belmonde and her searching hands. That's one impossible thing. The second impossible thing is the tide of arousal she found herself already drowning in on awaking. The third impossible thing is her inability to prevent herself thrusting her hand between her legs within seconds of awakening, to bring some kind of closure to the memory of Mattie's tongue and teeth on her neck.

These are not things that happen.

Mattie is not at breakfast. This is the first time she has not been there since their first morning meeting when Loa had her outburst. But there is a cup and a pot of coffee laid out in Lola's place, with a folded piece of paper under the saucer.

_See you tonight, Lola._

The coffee is cooler than she would like it, but Mattie can't have been gone long. She makes her eggs and tries to ignore the feeling that she is on the edge of an eroding cliff. She kissed Mattie yesterday. Tomorrow, perhaps she will be standing here again, in shock over whatever she's going to do today. But it is too early in the morning for these tense formations.

***

Lola is lying in bed and waiting. It is eleven o'clock and Mattie has not been seen all day. She hasn't put her hair up for the night, having spent an hour changing and re-changing. Should she dress appropriately? But appropriately for what? And if she dresses, what hopes or fears will Mattie read in her choices? Finally, she opts simply to go to bed as normal, but without fussing with her hair and wait for whatever is coming.

Mattie is coming up the stairs. It must be Mattie, because nobody else has footsteps with that degree of control. LaFontaine thumps the floor like they have a grudge against it, Laura tumbles and totters like an over-excited puppy, Carmilla paces and digs her heels in. Mattie hunts.

Her footsteps come up the stairs and pause, silent, outside Lola's room. Lola expects a knock, but it does not come. Rather, after the short pause, Mattie continues walking down the corridor to her own room, leaving Lola staring at the ceiling in bafflement.  
Lola reasons thus. Mattie is a vampire, therefore she has exceptional hearing. She can probably hear me breathing. Maybe she can even hear my heartbeat through the door. So she knows I'm awake – and she knows I'm awake because I'm waiting for her. _That's logic_ , says Tweedledee.

She makes her decision and swings her legs out of bed onto the soft rug.

The parquet flooring in the corridor outside maps out alternating squares of dark and light wood. _If I make it to the other end, do I become a Queen?_ Lola wonders. _Or will I be captured by the Rook?_

Her bare feet are cold on the wooden floor, but she advances from square to square, standing precisely in the middle of each one. With each step her perception seems to change and she watches herself as if from afar, moving from world to world. Here she is, padding out to a friend's room for a sleepover; here she is, climbing the pyramid to the sacrifice at the summit; here she is, approaching the witness stand. The altar. The gallows.

The steps up to the room at the end are low, but she takes them one at a time. Her head upright, she looks perfectly forward and steps into the room.

“You came.” Mattie is to her right, dressed in her silk dressing gown, red and black geometric patterns. There is no doubt in her voice, just confirmation. Lola says nothing, but turns to face her and with a breath, steps forward.

Mattie does not wait for her to even complete the step. She is suddenly there, and her arms have wound themselves around Lola's waist and neck, and her lips have found Lola's. 

_Begin at the beginning_ , the King says gravely in Lola's head when she tries to understand what is happening to her, _and go on till you come to the end: then stop_. But Lola is not sure what was the beginning, and doesn't know what the end will, and she doesn't want it to ever stop.

It is all happening at once. She is kissing Mattie, and Mattie is kissing her back. And then there are hands on her skin, pulling away her top. And then (or before?) Mattie lets her dressing gown drop and Lola covers her perfect body with her own hands and mouth. 

When Lola finds herself on the bed with Mattie's head between her legs and her name on her lips – that is before she does the same for her? Or after – or both, because Mattie is teasing her at some point about how hungry she is.

The one clear memory is of Matska Belmonde arching her back and crying out her name. _It must be my name,_ thinks Lola, _because she is saying it._

_"In one moment I've seen what has hitherto been_  
_Enveloped in absolute mystery,_  
_And without extra charge I will give you at large_  
_A Lesson in Natural History."_  
'The Hunting of the Snark: Fit the Fifth'

“-so he hired me as a consultant.” Mattie says with a laugh.

“A consultant. A thousand year-old vampire. Of course he did.” Lola rolls her eyes.

“I was younger in those days, darling. A mere sprig of six hundred or so. It was good for my CV.” Mattie stretches her arms and then settles back into her place curled around Lola.

“And you worked for Cardinal Richelieu... why?”

“Processes of state consolidation tend to result in the detritus of centuries being brought into the light as old institutions are dissolved.” She pauses. “Mother wanted to expand her library, essentially.”

The two are silent for a while, curled up in Mattie's bed. Outside, the pre-dawn light is beginning to grow. Lola lies on her back, Mattie half-thrown across her, and the vampire's words tickle her face as she speaks.

“Strange choice of company. Wouldn't think Cardinals were your cup of tea,” Lola comments as she traces her finger down Mattie's shoulder and onto her breast.

Mattie laughs softly against Lola's cheek. “People weren't much drinking tea in those days. But he wasn't your typical cleric and besides – he played a good game of chess. And he hardly said anything at all when I turned up with blood round my mouth, very polite.”

Lola stirs. “Kill a lot of people in those days?

Mattie gives as much as a shrug as she can in the circumstances.  
“A fair few.” Lola wonders when she stopped being so bothered by this.

“I've often wondered,” she says, which is not true because it has only just occured to her, “whether you bite down with the top two fangs at once, as in films, or whether you use the opposed canines on one particular side of your mouth, like an animal does when tearing up meat.” She is quite impressed at having got that precisely-constructed sentence out in one go.

Mattie stares blankly at her for a moment and then begins to laught, a deep rumbling sound.

“Because,” Lola continues, “if you were to bite with the top two fangs then you would also make marks from your lower teeth in a semicircle. Whereas if you bit with your side teeth, you would have to take a very wide bite to secure any more than a minor vein, and-” Mattie continues laughing, doubling up so that her head bumps into Lola's chest.

“-and from what I've seen of Laura's neck, it doesn't look like-” Mattie manages to uncurl herself and the laugh subcedes into a giggle.

“-I mean, I assume Carmilla is gentle with her, but-”

“Dear Lola, have you been spending your evenings admiring Kitty-cat's clawmarks all over her pet? On those days when she's not wearing a scarf, which I notice are getting fewer and fewer...”

Lola blushes, and Mattie smiles broadly. No fangs at the moment – they don't seem to be consciously extendable or retractable. Apparently they emerge when she's feeding. Lola has refrained from mentioning this to LaFontaine, who would probably be overcome with a desire to drag J.P. and his new body into a scanner.

“You know, if you're so curious, I could...” and Mattie leans over, her head tucking itself under Lola's chin and she can feel the vampire's breath tickling her neck at the edge of her collarbone. Softly, very softly, Lola feels the tip of Mattie's tongue touch the hollow at the base of her neck and the bedroom is gone, and the light outside is gone and she is in a world where everything is perched precariously on the edge of the vampire's teeth.

She can feel her heart fluttering, her nipples stiffening, the familiar ache between her legs building and it is not just Mattie's lips causing these. _You knew this would happen_ , she hears in the back of her mind, _you knew perfectly well that this is where the whole thing would bring you_.

“Yes,” she says suddenly. She turns to look at Mattie, who raises an eyebrow questioningly. “Yes. Bite me.” A smile breaks out over the vampire's face.

“So,” Mattie says with relish as she raises herself up onto her elbow, “you're asking the ancient bloodthirsty fiend to bite you? Because – let me hazard a guess here – because you think it'll get you off?”

Lola is familiar enough with Mattie now to know where this is going, but she still flushes. “Yes. Bite me.”

“You're saying,” Mattie continues, raising a hand to stroke Lola's neck, “that you think it might add an exquisite pleasure to your already climax-heavy night if you were to feel fangs sliding into your veins. That you'll get some kind of thrill out of it.” 

Her voice is pulling strings in Lola's mind and body. “Yes,” she hisses, and bends her head back to expose her neck. 

“Well, you asked for it. You little monster.”

And to Lola it as if she is pinned out on a page like an insect, splayed and marked down as the Mattie's eyes map her to the last inch. Then in one half-second, the vampire is diving forward, fangs extending and plunging through the skin of her neck, throwing Lola into a spasm as she archs herself upwards and throws herself wide, unravelling, gasping, all unfurling.

_Without rest or pause—while those frumious jaws_  
_Went savagely snapping around—_  
_He skipped and he hopped, and he floundered and flopped,_  
_Till fainting he fell to the ground._  
'The Hunting of the Snark: Fit the Seventh'

Her _teeth_. Lola dreams about Mattie biting her, fangs sinking into her neck, her arms, her thighs. She wakes panting and frantic and, since Mattie has chosen this morning of all mornings to leave early, takes herself into the shower to climax, shuddering, as the hot water washes away the sweat of the feverish dream.

“Bite me,” she asks Mattie each night they spend together, and Mattie spends the following age agonisingly persuading Lola to beg for it, to explain why she needs it, how much she loves the feeling of fangs sliding in, how hard it makes her come. Lola tells her this each time, part of her lost in the haze of arousal, part of her feeling the layers of her self-image pull apart, part of her noting abstractedly that this may actually be Mattie's twisted way of ensuring that she really does want it.

Lola inspects herself in the bathroom mirror and notes with pride her bitemarks. Maybe I should put a label around my neck saying _Drink Me_ , she muses, and giggles. In truth, for all the exciting dreams about being drained dry, Mattie doesn't take much blood at all. Just a taste for her satisfaction, and a couple of pinpricks for Lola's. The part of her that is till neat-and-tidy Perry – the part of her that is still sane - is glad that they don't get too much blood on the sheets.

She has taken to wearing a lot of scarves, and the snickering from the others has largely stopped. Laura – herself rather devoted to scarves these days – quietly told her early on that it was something of a relief to find that at least one other person agrees with her on the pleasures of dating a hungry vampire. It is the only conversation Lola has ever had with anybody about a sexual experience, and she realises afterwards that she felt proud to be having it, to have that new dimension of her life recognised.

Mattie's recognition of her is a constant pleasure. Lola knew beforehand that she could be affectionate, of course – her relationship wirth Carmilla is a constant stream of nicknames, memories, private jokes – but the sheer responsiveness that Mattie has to her now even in public is a revelation. 

“All right, Lola?” Mattie asks her at dinner, as she shifts in her seat with a touch of discomfort. Lola is getting used to J.P.'s new body, but there are still moments when his pose looks too much like Will for her comfort. It's not his fault, and for a disembodied freak in a vampire body he's actually pretty nice. To his credit he seems to be making a conscious effort to separate his appearance from that of Will. Or maybe that's just because LaFontaine finds beards and floppy hair cute.

She squeezes Mattie's arm in reply.

As J.P. tries to explain – at some pedantic length and with repeated interruptions from LaFontaine – the nature of what they have discovered in the brain fluids of the fish minions, Lola starts to feel a tickling on her right knee, under the table. It grows, and resolves itself into the stroking of Mattie's fingers, which then curl round her leg and start their stroking on the inside of her thigh, brushing her light skirt out of the way.

She shoots a glance at Mattie to her right, who has to all appearance switched her attention from Lola over to teasing J.P. with the latest of her barrage of nicknames for him. She shifts in her chair, a little closer to Mattie and feels an acknowledging tap on her leg.

Mattie's fingers continue to stroke away as Lola surprises herself by her ability to berate Laura over her covering the tablecloth in bits of jelly while there are long slender fingers slowly moving the way up her thigh. Laura seems particularly unco-ordinated this evening – that girl's sugar based diet seems to cause hyperactivity and crashes at wildly varying intervals.

Lola manages to turn a gasp into a quiet gulp as Mattie's fingers brush over her underwear and start circling. She casts a sideways glance at the woman is currently smiling broadly at something Carmilla is saying. _While little hands make vain pretense/ Our wanderings to guide_ , thinks Lola. This is like boating down the river. Struggle against it and you wear yourself out in vain effort. Drift along with it and you'll find you can go anywhere. She lets out a breath, and opens her legs wider. Mattie smiles.

The fingers are pulling her soaked underwear out of the way when Lola begins unwinding her scarf. “Too hot in here,” she comments to nobody in particular, and notes with pleasure the various expressions on those around her as they take in the bites and marks. Carmilla looks ironicly approving; J.P. and LaFontaine avert their eyes; Laura smirks. Mattie's eyes widen in the corner of her vision, and Lola is sure that her breathing is deeper when she rubs distractedly at one of the fresher ones.

“You were wanton at dinner, Lola,” Mattie whispers in her ear later. “No shame at all.” Lola lets out a moan.

“Like it was my fault,” she says, ands tries to turn round to kiss Mattie, but the vampire casually pushes her down onto the bed, her cheek pressed against the pillow as Mattie continues to whisper to her from behind.

“Just giving you what you wanted. Like now. You want this, don't you?” Lola lets out a strangled cry.

“Not very coherent, darling. Try harder.” And Mattie, with fingers stroking and circling, extracts from Lola a detailed confession of how good it had felt to be touched like that, on and on until she feared that her skirt would be soaked and everyone would see it when she got up to stumble unsteadily to Mattie's room and plead to be finished off.

“Monster,” Lola says primly.

“Monster.” agrees Mattie. “Fine by you?”

“Fine by me.”

“Monster,” Mattie names her approvingly.

Later, thrown back on the bed with Mattie's thighs straddling her face and her tongue doing its best to pay back the vampire moan for moan, Lola has to stifle a mistimed laugh when it occurs to her that _Eat Me_ would be a perfectly good label to wear as well.

_In the midst of the word he was trying to say,_  
_In the midst of his laughter and glee,_  
_He had softly and suddenly vanished away—_  
_For the Snark was a Boojum, you see._  
'The Hunting of the Snark: Fit the Eighth'

Lying in Mattie's arms and listening to the wind outside, Lola thinks she is beginning to understand at last what _frumious_ means.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to formally apologise to the ghost of Lewis Carroll.
> 
> Edited on 30/11/2015, as I had mistakenly attributed a saying of the Red Queen to the White King.


End file.
